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practices and economic theory, and it provides tools to facilitate a more organized, logical
approach to decision-making. Thus, asset management provides a framework for handling
both short- and long-range planning (Hill 2006).

An Asset Management decision-making framework is guided by performance goals,
covers an extended time horizon, draws from economics as well as engineering, and
considers a broad range of assets that include physical as well as human resources. Asset
Management provides
for the economic assessment of trade-offs between alternative improvements and
investment strategies from the network- or system-level perspective (that is, between
modes and/or asset classes within modes).
Increased asset availability and greater asset reliability provide a basis for improving
service delivery and growing more revenue from the same asset base. As organizations
tune their supply chains to meet specific supply levels, their asset or equipment uptime and
availability must align to these demand schedules (Robbins 2000).Asset management has
a direct impact on profitability, since it affects the quality of the product or service
produced or delivered. It is associated with price, and ultimately, determining profitability.
The quantity of goods produced or services delivered directly contributes to the top-line
revenue for any organization, whether in energy, utility, manufacturing, transportation,
logistics or public sector. Asset management also has a logical impact on operational costs.

Concept of Productivity
Businesses produce goods and render services with the aim of making returns on their
investments. The goods and services are the output of the enterprises. In the process of
production, a firm makes use of scarce resources which are called factors of production
(land, labour and capital). These factors of production are generally referred to as inputs in
the production process and their owners are rewarded from the returns generated. How to
combine the inputs to have a maximum result “greatest output with a given input” is the
problem of productivity. Unfortunately, there is no universal definition of the term,
productivity. It has been defined by Economists as the ratio of output to input in a given
period of time (Brigham, 2001). In other words, it is the amount of output produced by each
unit of input. Business Managers, on the other hand, see productivity not only as a measure
of efficiency, but also connotes effectiveness and performance of individual organizations.
For them, productivity would incorporate quality of output, workmanship, adherence to
standards, absence of complaints, customer satisfaction, etc. (Banker et al 2000).

According to Adekoya (1989), administrators concentrates on organizational
effectiveness, while the industrial engineer focuses more on those factors which are more
operational and quantifiable, work measurement and performance standards. Productivity
can be computed for a firm, industrial group, the entire industrial sector or the economy as
a whole. It measures the level of efficiency at which scarce resources are being utilized.
Higher or increasing productivity will, therefore, mean either getting more output with the
same level of input or the same level of output with less input. In a study conducted by
Burke (2004), emphasis was made between total-factor productivity and partial
productivity. The study finally conclude that partial productivity is better for firm's
measurement as it estimates the ratio of total output to a single input, usually labour.
However, we insist that, productivity is not determined by the efforts of labour alone, but in
combination of land, capital, technology, management and even the environment.

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